A Good Day for the Obituaries Les Bernstein

released from the dense knot of stable identity relieved of unfinished earthly busyness and provided a long view of shifting perspectives

5 people well over 90

3 in their sleep

2 surrounded by family unanchored their moorings slipped to a cushioned distance and according to the daily news peacefully passed to parts unknown

Mark Crimmins

Go ahead throw this letter away and forget about it! That’s what Ethel Searle of Gallup, New Mexico did Then she went out and did her gro cery shopping and got bitten by a tarantula that crawled out of a box of bananas. Or maybe it’s Blunt Wilson of Yelm, Washington you want to be like. He crashed his truck into a tree just outside of Tumwater when he ripped this letter up and threw the pieces out his cabin window Try to forget about Samantha Davis, who was buried by a mudslide in Hemet, California after she decided not to open this letter. Take it to school and make fun of it to your friends that way you can be like Jimmie Bates of Battle Mountain, Nevada, who crashed his bike into a ditch full of radio active waste on his way home from school after being such a big hero to his chums! But I know that some people are a bit more concerned about their health than the fools who made the mistake of ignoring this letter, and it’s to these people that I now address myself. You don’t need to know who I am that’s not important. What’s important is understanding that Saint James the Obscure needs this letter to make its way around the world before he can extend the life expectancy of the human race. But sending on this letter will also bring immediate benefits to the people who do so. Take Cecilia Whistle of Linden, Kansas. She received this letter on 17 March 1975. She made seventeen copies of it and sent them to her relatives. Six weeks later she went to Las Vegas and won twenty thousand dollars on the blackjack tables. Now she opens her mail with a diamond-studded letter opener and she’s quit her job at Burger King to write a book about how Saint James the Obscure has changed her life. Cecilia Whistle is smarter than The New York Times. I sent this letter to the editors, explaining that it was fitter than all the other news to print and asking them to display it on a full-page spread. And how did Amer ica’s national newspaper respond? It sent me a letter informing me of its advertising rates. I guess those New Yorkers aren’t as sharp as they want the rest of us to think. If you ask Saint James the Obscure for money to publish his good tidings, he gets real pissed off. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which newspaper had massive financial problems right after it made the mistake of treating Saint James the Obscure in a mercenary way. When someone’s trying to help you, the last thing you want to do is ask them for cash. When you’re lying in the middle of the freeway with a bulldozer on top of your head and the paramedics come to free you with the jaws of life, do you ask them for a hundred bucks so you can go out for cocktails after you get out of brain surgery? When six guys are mug ging you in a Memphis alley and a stranger risks his life to rescue you, do you ask him for the watch his wife gave him as a twenty-fifth anniver sary present? No You do what little Bobbie Starks of Austin, Texas did when he opened this letter before his parents came home from work. You realize that this is the turning point of your life and mail the letter to seventeen addresses in your Mom’s little black book by the telephone table in the hall so the grace of Saint James the Obscure can descend on them like a Scarlatti cantata. Little Bobbie Starks never told anybody he did the right thing. Within a month, his parents were sitting at the dinner table talking about their good luck. The Lincoln Town Car they won in the drawing at the fairgrounds The lifelong supply of coffee that mysteriously appeared from Colombia. The $51,000 bank error Austin Savings and Loan made in their favor. And whatever happened to Bob bie Starks? Now he lives in his parents’ backyard in his very own little house built out of 50,000 Lego bricks he won as a prize for an essay on toys And the nice thing about this is that the Starks family doesn’t have to feel guilty because of their good fortune. Seventeen of their friends have also received sudden and mysterious windfalls. But perhaps you want to hear my own story before you make a decision that will change your life forever. I received this letter in the mail five years ago and im mediately sent it to all my friends. I only had three friends, so I picked the other fourteen people out of the phone book. Within three weeks I was cured of my arthritis. A month later, I received a money order in the mail for 34,000 francs, a present from the Swiss government. My wife and I always wanted to have children, but we gave up on it when she turned sixty. Then I sent this letter out and Saint James the Obscure got 50 Crimmin s to work. Now we have three children and all of them have appeared in baby commercials from which we receive lucrative residuals. I’m trying to learn how to drive a Ferrari Dino that a total stranger left me in his will. Other wonderful things have been happening to me too numer ous to mention here. The important thing is that you mail this letter to seventeen people immediately Then all you have to do is sit back and wait for your reward. All you need is the cost of the stamps and the intel ligence to realize that Saint James the Obscure has chosen you to be the recipient of his benevolence! Act now! Head over to the post office and prepare to prosper! Crimmins